Please, please report people who put their ko-fi or Patreon on their AO3 without mercy. Just click the link at the bottom of the page that says Policy Questions and Abuse Reports and say the user is engaging in monetisation. Say where you saw their ko-fi link or mention (author’s note, whatever) and copy the info on their user profile, too, in order to make it easier for the volunteers.
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REPORT THEM ALL
If you're concerned, there's nothing punitive about this, it's just enforcement of the TOS they agreed to when they signed up. And there's no real risk of the fic being removed, either. AO3 will contact the author and nicely ask them to remove the link, and that's it.
Yeah, that too.
Literally the only downside is making too much work for the Abuse team. (Cry me a river, guys. In my day, we had like 2 active people, and even at the much smaller size, that was a problem.)
If you want, you can let authors know it’s not allowed and then report their asses if they’re rude about it. Or you can just report them in the first place.
But this bullshit should be stamped out.
Wait can someone explain what I'm missing here because it sounds like a bunch of whiny babies being upset that people are monetizing their own work. I get its a site policy but 1. Why are you being a cop you losers and 2. Who cares? Why is it a rule?
If I'm missing something here I'm genuinely curious. Who is it hurting to drop a ko-fi on your page? Or do y'all just love being cops?
I did not donate seven years of free labor to build AO3 so that some other dipshit could monetize my work.
And yes, it is monetizing AO3 itself because the whole reason people want to put kofi links there is that it’s easy to find fics on AO3. AO3 also lacks constant competition from other ads.
AO3 is as awesome as it is because we built it to not be monetized.
People who don’t get that are shitting on the people who made and still make AO3 possible with their work and their donations.
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Go post your kofi links on a corporate site like tumblr/twitter/etc., not one built by your fellow fans. Disobeying the AO3 rules is just rude.
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Look, when you do whatever on a big social media site, you're fucking with corporate overlords.
When you're doing stupid shit on AO3, you're coming to a dinner party I planned and hosted and then pissing into the flower arrangement in the middle of the table.
The only whiny babies here are the ones demanding other fans provide them with a storefront for free.
You don't sell your vegetables at a charitable food bank. You rent a booth at the farmer's market. You don't set up your book kiosk in the lobby of a public library. You go to a flea market, or somewhere else that allows you to set up a book kiosk. AO3 is fandom's food bank. It is fandom's public library. It is not your storefront. If you want to sell your work, don't do it on a nonprofit website volunteers built for the *explicit* purpose of creating an anti-capitalist fandom oasis.
There’s also the VERY REAL problem that the main defense of transformative work -- aka fanfiction -- to keep us from getting our asses sued into the stratosphere by Disney, Marvel, etc. is that we don’t profit from it. If you are writing someone else’s IP for money without their permission, they CAN sue you, and if it’s somebody as big as Fox, Disney, etc., they WILL sue you. The main way I can tell fandom has done a good job of making safe spaces for ourselves is that these young’uns coming up don’t remember getting Cease & Desist letters from very scary lawyers.
So that’s why you report people putting kofi links on AO3 - because by doing so, they’re painting a giant fucking target on fandom’s back.
I'm sorry but when fanart gets to be rightly monetized by artists of all kinds and fan writing is the only form of fan creative endeavor that gets this weird ass "noooo don't monetize this you're gonna make *me personally* receive a lawyer threat" double standard, I don't care that Ao3 is "your baby", I still think it's a shitty rule to enforce and y'all are being fandom cops. I want my Ao3 account to stay up so I'm playing by the rules, but I still v much think that one in particular needs stricken off.
I understand that the legal threats used to be very real but when's the last time someone actually got sued for writing fanfic? because my google-fu couldn't find anything that wasn't at least ten years old by now.
1. Fan artists get their for-pay stuff taken down all the time.
2. You have missed the entire point about monetizing other people’s work.
Monetize your fic on Patreon (where it’s banned but you’ll probably get away with it), not on a site built by your fellow fans’ unpaid labor they gave with the expectation of it not being monetized.
It is disgusting to expect other fans to build you a free storefront, which is what “boo hoo, you’re cops” is saying.
If you sold on Etsy, you’d expect to pay Etsy a share of your proceeds. Ditto Patreon. Ditto any storefront. Those have paid staff building the site. They’re there to be stores.
AO3 does not have that automatic mechanic, and even if you personally chose to donate a portion of what you earned, adding commerce changes the site culture, which is precisely why it’s banned.
It’s much less about lawsuits and much more about ruining your community while taking advantage of your neighbors.
Anyone who thinks that’s cool is an awful community member.
